wise.'
'Oh, come now! Wouldn't you chuck it if you could?'
'And acknowledge myself beaten,' said Nora, with a flash of spirit. 'You don't know,' she went on after ironing busily a moment, 'what I went through before I came here. I tried to get another position as lady's companion. I hung about the agents' offices. I answered advertisements. Two people offered to take me; one without any salary, the other at ten shillings a week and my lunch. I, if you please, was to find myself in board, lodging and clothes on that magnificent sum! That settled
'Depot; you forget.'
'My whole fortune consisted of seven dollars and thirty-five cents; I think it was thirty-five.'
'What about that wood you're splitting, Reg?' said a voice from the doorway.
Eddie came in fumbling nervously in his pockets. He detested scenes and had some reason to think that he was having more than his share of them in the last few days.
'Has anyone seen my tobacco! Oh, here it is,' he said, taking his pouch from his pocket. 'Come, Reg, you'd better be getting on with it.'
'Oh, Lord, is there no rest for the wicked?' exclaimed Hornby as he lounged lazily to the door.
'Don't hurry yourself, will you?'
'Brilliant sarcasm is just flying about this house to-day,' was his parting shot as he banged the door behind him.
CHAPTER IX
Nora understood perfectly that her brother had been forced to take a stand as a result of this last quarrel with Gertie. Well, she was glad of it. Things certainly could not go on in this way forever. Of course he would have to make a show, at least, of taking his wife's part. But, equally of course, he would understand her position perfectly. However much his new life and his long absence from England might have changed him, at bottom their points of view were still the same. He and she, so to speak, spoke a common language; she and Gertie did not.
Gertie had probably been pouring out her accumulation of grievances to him for the last half hour. Now it was her turn. She would show that she was, as always, more than ready to meet Gertie half-way. It would be his affair to see that her advances were received in better part in future than they had been.
She went on busily with her ironing, waiting for him to begin. But Eddie seemed to experience a certain embarrassment in coming to the subject. While she took article after article from the clothes-basket at her side, he wandered about the room aimlessly, puffing at a pipe which seemed never to stay lighted.
[Illustration: MARRIED--THOUGH SECRETLY ENEMIES.]
'That's the toughest nut I've ever been set to crack,' he said at length, pointing his pipestem after the vanished Hornby. 'Why on earth did you give him a letter to me?'
'He asked me to. I couldn't very well say no.'
'I can't make out what people are up to in the old country. They think that if a man is too big a rotter to do anything at all in England, they've only got to send him out here and he'll make a fortune.'
'He may improve.'
'I hope so. Look here, Nora, you've thoroughly upset Gertie.'
'She's very easily upset, isn't she?'
'It's only since you came that things haven't gone right. We never used to have scenes.'
'So you blame me. I came prepared to like her and help her. She met all my advances with suspicion.'
'She thinks yon look down on her. You ought to remember that she never had your opportunities. She's earned her own living from the time she was thirteen. You can't expect in her the refinements of a woman who's led the protected life you have.'
